Star Command PC Kickstarter reveals first in-game footage

By Owen Faraday09 Jul 20120

From the explosive first footage of Star Command.

Star Command's devs have been wary of showing off in-game footage of their highly-anticipated iOS & Android starship sim, citing a fear of giving Zynga and other rip-off factories a head start. But now, as Kickstarter's first high-profile video game success returns to the site for another round of funding, we get to see the game in action for the first time.

Developers Warballoon are going back to Kickstarter to fund the PC and Mac versions of Star Command, and the brilliant tongue-in-cheek pitch video shows off a couple of minutes of the mobile version's gameplay. Warballoon lead Jordan Coombs told me that they're still on track to release for iOS & Android at the end of this summer.

You can clearly see the X-Com influences in the combat that Warballoon have cited in the past -- but the combat has gone from turn-based to real-time apparently. Not entirely sure about that. And as much as Star Command has been called "Kairosoft in space", the pixel art is more detailed and the gameplay more interactive than anything the Japanese studio has ever put out.

Warballoon ruffled some feathers on Kickstarter earlier this year when they released a detailed account of how they'd spent their initial round of funds. They're going back to the crowdfunding well for what is essentially a completely different project, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some gaming sites trying to stoke indignation about it for the sake of a good headline.